Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies Volume 12 Issue 1 Article 3 Winter 2005 The Globalization of Multicultural Education Margaret Sutton Indiana University Follow this and additional works at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls Part of the Education Law Commons, and the International Law Commons Recommended Citation Sutton, Margaret (2005) "The Globalization of Multicultural Education," Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies: Vol. 12 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/ijgls/vol12/iss1/3 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School Journals at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies by an authorized editor of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Globalization of Multicultural Education MARGARET SUTTON* INTRODUCTION The appearance of edited volumes on a topic signals the maturation of scholarly reflection upon it within the field of comparative education. Such is the case with "multicultural education."' In common usage in the United States, multicultural education generally refers to education about different ethnic groups that comprise the U.S. population. Indeed, the vast majority of the liter- ature produced on the subject consists of curricular units for teaching about African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos/Chicanos, or various Asian- American groups. As dialogue on cultural difference and education has spread to other nations, it has become more sharply focused on complex issues of iden- tity, diversity, and citizenship. Advocates of multicultural education define it as having either two or three key features. James Banks, a leading voice in the field, defines three central con- cerns addressed by multicultural education: validating the identities of socially oppressed groups; teaching the history of exploitation and resistance to it; and pro- viding empowering education to oppressed groups.2 Others reduce these features to two: "the 'recognition of diversity' strand [and] the 'social equality' strand."3 Scholars of multicultural education agree that it is a social movement for educa- tional reform that initially grew out of civil rights movements in the United States, 4 particularly efforts for the complete enfranchisement of African-Americans. *Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Indiana University- Bloomington; M.A. (Philosophy of Education), University of British Columbia, Canada (1978); Ph.D. (International Development Education), Stanford University (1991). 1. See JAMES A. BANKS, DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION: GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES (2004) [hereinafter DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION]; C.A. GRANT & J.L. LEI, GLOBAL CONSTRUC- TIONS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: THEORIES AND REALITIES (2001) [hereinafter GLOBAL CON- STRUCTIONS OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION]. See generally CARLOS ALBERTO TORRES, DEMOCRACY, EDUCATION, AND MULTICULTURALISM: DILEMMAS OF CITIZENSHIP IN A GLOBAL WORLD (1998) (dis- cussing theories of citizenship and multiculturalism). 2. See generally MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES 3-25 (James A. Banks & Cherry A. McGee eds., 5th ed. 2004). 3. W. Kymlicka, Foreword to DIVERSITY AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION,SUpra note 1, at xiii-xviii. 4. See generally JOHN McFADDEN ET AL., MULTICULTURAL & GLOBALINTERNATIONAL EDUCA- TION: GUIDELINES FOR PROGRAMS IN TEACHER EDUCATION (1997). MARGARET SUTTON The concerns of "multicultural education"--equality of educational access on the one hand and institutionalized recognition of historical inequalities on the other-are a global phenomenon of the twenty-first century. The way that they play out in each nation, however, is both historically specific and trans- nationally formed. This paper discusses ways in which concerns about multi- cultural education have spread around the world in the past ten to twenty years and how the meaning of the term and the questions surrounding it have changed as diversity itself has become an educational issue in diverse national contexts. Loosened from its mooring in the United States' civil rights move- ment, multicultural education has become a rubric-or foil-for a certain arena of educational reform discourse around the world. Whatever its specific connotations, and there are many, the term "multi- cultural education" speaks to questions of how school children are taught about their own social identity and the identity of others. As I argue in part one, the logic of mass schooling in nation-states already contains contradictions that sooner or later will raise questions about multiculturalism in any educational system. However, the "epochal" dimensions of globalization, such as wide-scale human migration and intensification of global communication, have compli- cated social identities within many nations and therefore stimulated public de- bate on how pluralism is recognized in the curriculum and pedagogy of national school systems. The cultural and economic trends, which have been concomi- tant with globalization, fuel national debates on multiculturalism in contradic- tory fashions. In part two I illustrate how, in the case of language in educational policy, globalization stimulates both greater acceptance of bilingual education and, in many communities, less acceptance of it. The paper concludes with an argument that the issues associated with multicultural education increasingly become an aspect of global educational debate; they converge around a common perspective of intercultural education. I. CITIZENSHIP, DIFFERENCE, AND MAss EDUCATION The institutionalization of mass, state-sponsored, formal education around the world carries in itself the seeds from which debate over multicultural educa- tion grows within different nations. As long noted by world systems theorists GLOBALIZATION OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION such as Arnove' and Ramirez,' mass schooling carries with it a universal cultural blueprint. That blueprint includes the value of meritocracy and thus, by implica- tion, the value of equity in education. Yet, as has long been clear in most nations, educational opportunity is differentially available to socially different groups. While the appearance of scholarly work that explicitly connects multiculturalism with educational systems around the world is relatively new, interest in educa- tional equity is an enduring theme of comparative education. Since its inception over 100 years ago, questions about equal access to education within nations and relative equality of access across nations have been central concerns for the field of 7 comparative education. Social pluralism is a reality in most, if not all, contemporary nations. In what nation, aside perhaps from the Democratic Republic of Korea, do all children speak the same mother tongue? In what country do all share a common religion, ethnicity, race, or caste? Differences in social identity can fundamentally deter- mine access to education, experiences in the formal education system, and the meaning and value of educational credentials in the lives of those who hold them. Such differences have long histories in most nations. Yet the landscape of differ- ences varies across nations. Most post-colonial nations have been formed on terri- tories defined by colonial rulers, which often cut through regions encompassing linguistic, ethnic, or other culturally defined groups. Thus, most post-colonial na- tions of Africa and Asia are culturally diverse in their formation. But so too are the "older" nation-states such as Germany and the United Kingdom, as Anderson re- minds us in ImaginedCommunities.8 The nations of the Americas include commu- nities of indigenous people who were subjugated by their colonizers-as does South Africa. European post-colonizing nations, including France and the United Kingdom, have also been labor magnets for former colonial subjects, but so too have oil-rich Gulf states. Refugees of war and civil conflict have sought refuge not only in Europe and the Americas, but in far larger numbers across 5. See generally Robert F Arnove, Comparative Education and World Systems Analysis, 24 CoMP. EDUC. REV. 48 (1980) (calling for a world system, as opposed to a nation-state, analysis of education). 6. See generally John Boli & Francisco 0. Ramirez, Compulsory Schooling in the Western Context, in EMERGENT ISSUES IN EDUCATION: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES (Robert F. Arnove et al. eds., 1992) (discussing generalized explanations for the development of mass schooling in the West). 7. See Robert F. Arnove, Introduction to COMPARATIVE EDUCATION: THE DIALECTIC OF THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL 1, 1-2 (Robert F. Arnove & Carlos Alberto Torres eds., 2d ed. 2003). 8. B.R.O.G. ANDERSON, IMAGINED COMMUNITIES: REFLECTIONS ON THE ORIGIN AND SPREAD OF NATIONALISM (Rev. & extended ed. 1991). MARGARET SUTTON nation-state borders in Africa. In short, conquest, migration, and diaspora have resulted in pluralism of all sorts. The range of diversities makes it difficult to de- fine typologies of pluralism across nation-states. Moreover, the lived experience of cultural identities may make such taxonomizing beside the point. This point is well made by Malkki's study of Burundian refugees in Tanzania. Working with migrants living in cities as well as in camps, she makes the important observation that adopting a specifically Burundian identity is far more salient and productive for those in refugee camps than those whose domiciles